Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils

Working languages of the project: French, English
Project term: 2020-2022
Shortcut: www.ecml.at/homelanguagecompetences

Main idea and objectives

The project will collect and analyse practices from several countries for assessing the language competences of migrant populations (home language competences) in order to define quality criteria for how they are evaluated. It will particularly focus on the ways in which plurilingual repertoires are taken into account, and on recommendations for the implementation of this type of formative evaluation, for example in terms of frameworks of test materials and level descriptions for specific languages.

The challenge is twofold:

1. to recognise the language skills and plurilingual repertoires of pupils - whether a pupil (or his or her family) has recently migrated or not, - as a pathway to greater social justice and a vehicle for acheiving educational success,
2. to promote, through formative evaluation, an inclusive approach that builds on existing language skills by integrating diverse methods of access to knowledge, skills and know-how (school curricula and „A framework of reference for pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures/FREPA“).

The formative evaluation test frameworks developed through the project will recommend, in particular through a mediation activity, implementation in scenarios relating to language competences and their actual use and plurilingual response methods as well as links to the language of schooling and/or the languages of the school curriculum. Furthermore, by proposing level descriptions for specific languages, by collecting assessment practices in languages for which very few level test materials exist, this action, which is based on current assessment practices in different European contexts, questions the potential 'transferability' of the CEFR and related assessment practices, particularly in the work of mapping language reference levels which the project requires.

Analysis and working methods will be based on the exchanges / expertise of the project team members / network members in order to implement in a collaborative way a common understanding of criteria for formative assessment, and to compile a bank of materials or frameworks.

This project is supported by countries signatory to the European Cultural Convention.